The Elgin Amphora is a large

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

neck-handled

amphora An amphora (; ; English ) is a type of container with a pointed bottom and characteristic shape and size which fit tightly (and therefore safely) against each other in storage rooms and packages, tied together with rope and delivered by land ...

made from fired clay in

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

around 760 to 750 BC. The ceramic vessel may have been used to hold wine at a funeral feast, and then entombed with the cremated remains of the deceased. Fragments have survived, decorated in the Late Geometric style, and attributed to an unknown artist given the '' Notname'' of "the Dipylon Master", one of the earliest individually identifiable Greek artists. The fragments have been restored to reconstruct a single but incomplete vessel, high, which is now displayed at the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

in London. The amphora stands on a rim foot. The outer surface of its ovoid body is decorated with bands of geometric patterns, including repeated lozenges in a tapestry design around the widest part of the amphora, rows of triangles, and a chequered pattern on its shoulders. The tall cylindrical neck bears a double

meander A meander is one of a series of regular sinuous curves in the Channel (geography), channel of a river or other watercourse. It is produced as a watercourse erosion, erodes the sediments of an outer, concave bank (cut bank, cut bank or river cl ...

, and a frieze of water birds just below the rim. The strap handles are decorated with dotted serpents. Fragments of the amphora were excavated in Athens by Giovanni Battista Lusieri in 1804–6. The exact find location is not known, but it was probably somewhere between the Mouseion Hill and the River Ilisos. It was acquired by

Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine, ( ; 20 July 176614 November 1841), often known as Lord Elgin, was a Scottish nobleman, diplomat, and collector, known primarily for the controversial procurement of marble sculptures ...

. His descendants sold it to John Hewett before the 1950s, and it was then acquired by Hon Robert Erskine, the son of John Erskine, Lord Erskine. A fragment was sold at

Sotheby's Sotheby's ( ) is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine art, fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...

in 1994, and later reunited with the other fragments which were bought privately. It was loaned to the British Museum, and then acquired by the British Museum in 2004 from the Trustees of the Stanford Place Collection, using £40,000 provided by The Art Fund, and funds from the

Wolfson Foundation The Wolfson Foundation is a British registered charity that awards grants to support science and medicine, health, education and the arts and humanities. It was established in 1955 and re-registered in 2014. , the endowment of the Wolfson Fo ...

, Alexander Talbot Rice, British Museum Friends, the Caryatid Fund, and the

Society of Dilettanti The Society of Dilettanti (founded 1734) is a British society of noblemen and scholars that sponsored the study of ancient Greek and Roman art, and the creation of new work in the style. History Though the exact date is unknown, the Society i ...

Charitable Trust

References

The Elgin Amphora
British Museum
Elgin Amphora by Dipylon Workshop, Athens
Art Fund
Elgin Amphora
Google Arts & Culture {{British Museum 8th-century BC works 1804 archaeological discoveries Greek artifacts outside Greece Amphorae Iron Age Greek art Ancient Greek and Roman objects in the British Museum Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin Archaeological discoveries in Attica